Looking Back on Vietnam

Entry 18:


Before we even arrived in Vietnam, we had heard a variety of opinions about the country. Our friend Mai and her husband Ken could not say enough good things about it while others had negative experiences travelling there. Both of us are too young to have any memories of the war and its political implications. As the Saigon Grill restaurant in New York was on our list of top 10 restaurants in the city, we were looking forward to the food in Vietnam. Here are some highlights from our month there:


On our trip to Ha Long Bay, our tour guide told us about some of the customs of the ethnic minority people. For example, when a man wants to get married, he needs to ask permission of the village matchmaker. His family has to give money and gifts to the bride's family including approximately $30, two chickens, and a pig's head. These gifts are presented in 7 boxes covered in red cloth for luck and prosperity. He then has to carry the bride on his back all the way to her house. She has to step over a pair of scissors to symbolize cutting all connections with her family. She will not be able to ask for a divorce thereafter as her family will have to return all the gifts received to the groom's family, an impossible prospect.


Another interesting tale: Because Vietnamese are Buddhists, they believe in burial rather than cremation. Several years after a person is burried, the remains are exhumed, rinsed and placed in a little box, only to be reburried. They believe this process releases the spirit.


Daily customs: When meeting someone new, it is common to be asked personal questions, such as "how old are you?" (We were asked mostly where we were from). Age is important because the elderly are given much respect. When clicking two glasses together for a toast , the younger person will place his/her glass lower than the elder's glass as a sign of respect. During meals, older people get a one second head start on the food.


Even though Vietnam is a large country, it seems as if most backpackers stick to a tried and true path through the most popular cities. This ensures fairly easy travelling and most Vietnamese people along the way speak good English. In addition to English, you will hear many phrases along the way that are important in one's daily life:

• "Hello motorbike." This phrase, which can be heard about 497 times per day is an invitation to ride on the back of a motorbike as a means of transportation to nearby destinations. Think of it as a taxi. The phrase can be punctuated with a period or question mark.


• "You buy from me," AKA "You buy something." Phrases often hear upon encountering someone trying to sell goods. This phrase can be heard in markets, shops, sidewalks, and even while trekking in remote villages.


• "Same same." Instead of saying that two things are identical, the locals will point to the two objects and say this phrase. For example, if a motorbike ride costs $2 per person, they will say, "$2, same same," and point to each person. To point out that 2 things are similar, but not exactly the same, they may add, "but different" at the end of the phrase. This has become known in all of SE Asia and can be found on T-shirts everywhere.

From our experience, travelling within Vietnam is made easy with good transportation, accommodation, eateries, and available tours. In addition, the cost is fairly low, giving tourists a good "bang for their dong." The one negative we found was that the people are not as warm or accessible to tourists as in other countries. The Vietnamese, on the whole, are aggressive, cunning, and sometimes less than honest. Their country is filled with noise and pollution, especially in the large cities, from thousands of motorbikes and vehicles everywhere honking constantly and not giving any courtesies to pedestrians or anyone else on the road for that matter. As a result, we were constantly on edge, watching our backs, having to ensure that we were not being ripped off or in harm's way.

From North to South, we generally found it very easy to find good fresh food wherever we travelled. It was nice to sample regional specialties to get a better sense of the variety found in Vietnamese cooking. Because this part of the world has a good climate for growing vegetables, we easily encountered vegetarian fare, although for vegans you never know what is cooked in fish sauce...To our delight, it was always possible to drink fresh fruit juices for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. For the most part, the beer was nothing special with the exception of a brew called Larue Export. The Central Highland town of Dalat is known for producing wine, but somehow we never managed to sample it.

We got to meet individuals from various minority ethnic groups, purchase their handicrafts, taste their cooking, and learn about their customs. We bathed in the lake as they do, slept on the floor under mosquito nets in their homes, and chatted with them along the way.

It was our first SE Asian adventure.

Uncle Ho's City

Entry 17:

After the fall of Saigon in 1975, the government changed the name of the city to Ho Chi Minh City, as a tribute to the late leader of Northern Vietnam. That being said, many of the people we spoke to still call the city Saigon. Either way, we were on our way to the largest city in Vietnam for our last stop in the country.

Saigon in a massive sprawling city of over 5 million people and what seems like an equal number of motorbikes. According to our tour guide, Vietnam has over 80 million people and 25 million motorbikes. Rather than attempt to go it alone in this metropolis, we signed up for a city tour that would take us around to all the worthwhile sites in town. On our tour we visited a Chinese pagoda, a market in Chinatown, a temple dedicated to a Sea Goddess, the War Remnants Museum, the Reunification Palace, Notre Dam Cathedral, and the Post Office. Needless to say, it was a full day.

That evening, we ventured on our own to a night market filled with local eateries. At first we contemplated eating there, but this idea was quickly eradicated after seeing live dangling frogs. Instead, we opted for a restaurant that was recommended called Quan An Ngon. This restaurant was in a beautiful setting in which various food stations exhibited women cooking before your eyes.

Lots of people had told us many things about Saigon, both good and bad, but we had had enough of the city and its craziness. We decided to book passage to Cambodia for the following day and begin the next chapter of our travels.

Meditation in the Mountains

Entry 16:
Our half-day tour in BMT ended with our tour guide, Mr. Anh, leaving us at a bus stop and telling us to wait at Lak Lake for our bus ride to the popular tourist destination in the mountains, the city of Dalat. Little did we know we were about to go on a very bumpy and very curvy 4-hour ride. We arrived after sunset, but found a nice accommodation and were on our way to find dinner somewhere quiet.

The next day, we again joined a day tour of the city and its surroundings. The first stop was of a Zen Buddist monastery called Truc Lam. We learned that visitors can join the monks for a day's meditation and met briefly with a monk to ensure our visit the next day.

On we went to the Dragon Pagoda, which was beautiful on its own, but was also next door to another pagoda that had a massive and most impressive bell.

The two strangest/cheesiest stops on the tour included the Crazy House, a hotel that has delirious architecture that forces its guests to climb up and down twisted stairs through various buildings and has themed rooms. The other stop that was not worth much mention was entitled the "Valley of Love" by the French. It is a goofy park where objects were placed for tourists' photographs. However, once the camera comes out, an employee approaches to ask for money for the photo. There is a lake you can walk around for some peace and tranquility.

The next morning, we awoke early to cab over to the monastery for a day of guided meditation. On the previous morning, the monk asked us to be present at 6:30am. Despite the rain, we made it in time, but a different monk enformed us that the abbott was not at the monastery that day and therefore he would be unable to allow us to spend the day without getting the abbott's permission. Our hope to spend the day with the brothers and sisters in meditation was not to be. Instead, we sat with this particular monk for about 30 minutes drinking tea and talking about the lifestyle of a buddhist monk. He did not want us to leave empty handed, and therefore gave us several books on Zen Buddhism. We were bummed out that we could not stay for the day, but high-tailed it back to Dalat to try to catch the next bus to Saigon.

What's In A Name

Entry 15:
Our next destination was in the Central Highlands of the country, an area not well visited by tourists. In fact, it was only in the late '90s that this area was even opened to foreign visitors. Many of the tour companies do not include it on their regular itinerary. But we decided to delve deeper into Vietnam. Moreover, it was also the childhood home of our good friend Mai.

We arranged for bus travel to the region's center, a town called Buon Ma Thuot (BMT). You can imagine all the various double entendre jokes we could come up with for this name. All of them are too unsavory for this family-friendly blog.

BMT as it is known to the locals is the center of the coffee plantations throughout the highlands. Coffee growing was initiated by the French during their colonial rule over Vietnam. We thought it would be exciting to tour the area and even visit a coffee plantation. Unfortunately, since this town is so far removed from most travellers' itineraries, we found it to be difficult to manouver as almost nobody spoke English and restaurant menues were in Vietnamese only. We could not find a tour operator with any group tours. Private tours would cost more than $100 per day. We opted for a private half-day tour that would only take us to visit a couple of ethnic minority villages. The short tour was pretty good and we even got to see some goofy French tourists riding atop elephants. We were eager, though, to get out of town.

Mud Bathing and Beaching

Entry 14:
Despite our not-so-great start to the day, things quickly turned around. We found a wonderful hotel one block from the beach, which true to its name was nice (Nice Hotel). It was also $8 a night, so we decided to stay a while and relax.

Nha Trang in a typical beach town with dozens of hotels, beachside restaurants, and pubs. The only thing not typical are the Buddhist pagodas that overlook the beach from the mountains. While we stayed in a nondescript local hotel, many chain hotels like the Sheraton are planning to open up along the beach. In addition, as we were there on a weekend, we passed by several local weddings taking place in beachside hotels.

On our first day there, we took a taxi over to a center in the mountains where we could soak in mud. This unique resort has a variety of different sized outdoor tubs that once you sit in them, they are filled with muddy mineral water. After 15 or 20 minutes, one is supposed to then go "bake" in the sun to allow the mud to dry on the skin. This is followed by a series of showers and warm/hot clean mineral water bathing. All of this with giggling Vietnamese girls who don't speak any English and fat Russian men and their families. The day was made even better by ice cold coconut water drunk directly from the coconut via a straw.

Another site of interest included the gallery of Nha Trang's most famous photographer, Long Thanh. His photos are all in B&W of locals and are very captivating. Our trip to Long Son pagoda was beautiful, but as our photos are temporarily unavailable, please click on the hyperlink to see photos we found online.

The rest of our days in the city we spent on the beach, in the water, getting massages, or eating wonderful food, including at the very impressive Sailing Club and Relax Club.

We didn't want to leave, but also realized we still had lots to see in Vietnam and beyond.

(Un)Magical Mystery Tour

Entry 13:
The ride on the minibus was no different from other experiences we had had in this part of the world in the sense that the locals fail to inform the tourists about what is about to happen. In our case, we were not explained where they were taking us. However, we finally arrived at the large sleeper bus and headed to our "seats." We thought it was very considerate of the bus company to provide plastic bags to cover our packs due to the rainy weather, but more about this later. We quickly made friends with our bedmates as they would accompany us for the next 12 hours. Besides the fact that we were sharing a bad in the back of the bus with three other adults, our bed also happened to be on top of the motor and lacked A/C vents. This combination of factors ensured that our ride would be hot, hot, hot.

One thing that you need to know about tour buses in Vietnam is that they are driven by total maniacs. There is a compulsion to accelerate, break, and honk the extremely loud airhorn with much enthusiasm. Additionally, this shady company we took also picked up Vietnamese passengers along the way who sat on stools in the aisles or strung hammocks from the upper seats. To add to the maddness, it seemed the driver had brought live birds and other mysterious cargo in the luggage compartment, as we could hear chirping from where we were sleeping.

Needless to say, somehow we arrived in Nha Trang in one piece, drenched in sweat, but happy to be off the bus finally. We had never been so pleased to be greeted by sunshine and fresh air as we were that morning. The nightmare was not over, however. As we ripped open the plastic off our luggage, we found the bags to smell of fish. Some of this unfortunate odorous liquid spilled onto our bags and left a stench that needed to be repeatedly cleaned with soap in our hotel shower. But at least we were in a beach town and ready to have some fun in the sun.

Vietnamese Gondola

Entry 12:

We were so happy that on the day we left Hue the sun was finally shining. About four hours later, we arrived in Hoi An where it felt like 100 degrees outside. The rest of the day was spent wandering the lanes of this charming small Unesco town known for its tailors that make custom clothing. The next morning Marc was recovering from a cold, so Sharon went out and found a tailor to make her a custom suit. It wasn't long before Marc joined her in the shop for custom made trousers. Miraculously, only a few hours later we were back at the shop trying on the clothing for them to be altered for the next day.

Unfortunately, our streak of two rainless days was about to end. As we departed for a day trip to the Cham ruins at My Son (pronouned Mee Son), the skies opened up and the rain began pouring down. For probably 6 hours it rained and rained and rained. Despite this, the ruins were still impressive and served as a preview of our upcoming trip to Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
While some people on our tour opted for the cheaper bus ride back to town, we spent a few more dollars for the upgraded boat ride back. At the time of booking, we obviously were unaware of the coming rain. So needless to say, it was a not so good investment. However, we had a small adventure on the way. Our boat was approached by another small boat carrying furniture and the Vietnamese woman working on our boat purchased a bed, which was then hauled onto our boat without ever docking. This made for a kodak moment.

When we got back to Hoi An we had to walk through calf high water just to reach our hotel. We had opted out of the gondola rides offered on account of the overflowing waters. At this point we were equipped with the information from our tour guide that the best rain gear is to be found in the market. Off we went to look for Rando gear, which continues to serve us for days later.

The next day was no better except that we decided to walk through town in our flip flops and just accept the fact that we were going to get all wet. Who knows what was lurking in that water! Good thing we both got Hep vaccinations before leaving the States. The clothes came out great and were quickly shipped home. They will arrive next Feb. when we return from our trip.

We had been warned to only travel with two Vietnamese bus lines, as the others were known to have shady reputations. On the morning we had planned to depart, we walked over to purchase our bus tickets, but were told the bus was completely sold out. Seemed like all the tourists wanted to get as far away from the flood as possible. We ran through the rain and flooded streets from travel agency to travel agency, but could only find one unknown bus company. The agent told us that the only seats available were in the back of the bus. Normally on the overnight bus, each person gets an individual bed. The backrow of the bus, however, is comprised of one large space shared by 5 people. Reluctantly, we agreed to spend the night with three other strangers.
We arrived at the travel agency around 6pm in a light rain and were shuttled via a minibus for 30 minutes to the bus that would take us to our next destination. We were told the streets were too flooded for the big bus. Not sure how the minivan is more capable of getting through the flooded streets, but what choice did we have? The night was not getting off to a good start...

To see photos of Hoi An, please go to our Shutterfly page: grossmintblog.shutterfly.com